Macfarlane Quotes & Sayings

Felt pressure, sensed texture and perceived space can work upon the body and so too upon the mind, altering the textures and inclinations of thought. — Robert Macfarlane

There are times when words are extra, like raindrops on drenched grass. There are times for holding. He held her ... — Bud Macfarlane Jr.

For equity markets, the combination of low interest rates, strong economic growth and low inflation has proved very beneficial, with global share markets rising solidly in each of the past three years. This has been underpinned by strong growth in profits so that, notwithstanding the rise in share prices, P/E ratios have been declining on average. — Ian Macfarlane

I'll tell you what I think is not okay. Have you ever seen that show on MSNBC, 'Lockup?' It's a reality show that takes place inside a prison. Do the prisoners have to sign release forms? Or do they have to be on it whether they like it or not? — Seth MacFarlane

I cannot tell good art from bad art. I have no eye for it. — Seth MacFarlane

I have a car that I like - an Aston Martin - for Sunday drives in the country. — Seth MacFarlane

Most of the outrage comes from not the public, but from the media, the press and writers. — Seth MacFarlane

When 'Family Guy' started, we wanted to make it more like a sitcom. And there was very little music. — Seth MacFarlane

The production of antibody is not the only, nor I believe the most important, manifestation of immunity, but for reasons both historical and of experimental convenience, antibody is likely to remain the touchstone of immunological theory. — Frank Macfarlane Burnet

The only problem is time. — Seth MacFarlane

Human insulin differs from other mammalian types by having a different C-terminal amino acid on the B chain. The immunological difference between beef insulin and human insulin, which is presumably responsible for the antigenicity of the former in some human beings, is thus limited to very a small portion of the whole molecule. — Frank Macfarlane Burnet

I do not believe in God. I'm an atheist. I consider myself a critical thinker, and it fascinates me that in the 21st century most people still believe in, as George Carlin puts it, 'the invisible man living in the sky' — Seth MacFarlane

There was no joke I could make that was too offensive. I can actually remember at least one time where my mother told me something that, I was like, 'whoa!' — Seth MacFarlane

I felt my way up the cliffs to the south until I found a patch of machair a few yards long and a few wide, where I pitched my tent and settled to sleep. The stars stood sharp above. It felt odd to be on rock again, not sea, to think of the ground on which I lay extending down to the floor of the Minch. Lying there, I could still feel the day at sea, blood and water slopping about in my bag of skin, the tidal churn of my liquid body, a roll and sway in the skull. My mind beat back north against the current, thinking of the puffins' flight, the lines we leave behind us, the spacious weave, our wake, then sleep. — Robert Macfarlane

I was a film major with a concentration in animation. — Seth MacFarlane

I had started climbing trees about three years earlier, or rather, re-started; for I had been at a school that had a wood for its playground. We had climbed and christened the different trees (Scorpio, The Major Oak, Pegagsus), and fought for their control in territorial conflicts with elaborate rules and fealties. My father built my brother and me a tree house in our garden, which we had defended successfully against years of pirate attack. In my late twenties, I had begun to climb trees again. Just for the fun of it: no ropes, and no danger either.

In the course of my climbing, I learned to discriminate between tree species. I liked the lithe springiness of silver birch, the alder and the young cherry. I avoided pines -- brittle branches, callous bark -- and planes. And I found that the horse chestnut, with its limbless lower trunk and prickly fruit, but also its tremendous canopy, offered the tree-climber both a difficulty and an incentive. — Robert Macfarlane

You break the story first, and then you go into the specifics. — Seth MacFarlane

The instinct and the body (the felt smoothness of pebbles, the seen grain of light) must know in ways that the conscious mind cannot. — Robert Macfarlane

You gotta keep the funny intact. — Seth MacFarlane

Mountains seem to answer an increasing imaginative need in the West. More and more people are discovering a desire for them, and a powerful solace in them. At bottom, mountains, like all wildernesses, challenge our complacent conviction - so easy to lapse into - that the world has been made for humans by humans. Most of us exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged, themed and controlled. One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and which have their own rhythms and orders of existence. Mountains correct this amnesia. By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us. — Robert Macfarlane

There are things about the single lifestyle that are very appealing. — Seth MacFarlane

'Adult Swim' on the Cartoon Network is unbelievable. And 'South Park' continues to do great stuff. And 'Family Guy' and the various other Seth MacFarlane projects are amazing. — Matt Groening

Every year, the Friday before the new Saturday-morning shows would premiere, the networks would do this big preview special, and I was always glued to the TV. As horrible as they were, they were entertaining at the time. There was a lot of showmanship from the networks based around the new lineup. — Seth MacFarlane

A life lived as variously as Roger's, and evoked in writing as powerful as his, means that even after death his influence continues to flow outwards. Green Man-like, he appears in unexpected places, speaking in leaves. — Robert Macfarlane

When astrology was conceived, all of the celestial bodies were in different places. So if you're a Sagittarius now, I guess you would have been a Capricorn 2,000 years ago. — Seth MacFarlane

We never really tried to shock for shock's sake on 'Family Guy'. If something was horribly offensive and shocking, we would put it in if it was also hysterically funny. — Seth MacFarlane

[With R-rated movie] you're not dealing with the restrictions imposed by the FCC. They're self-imposed. In a way, that does make it harder. You actually have to think about it, as opposed to just taking for granted that you're not going to be able to do this. — Seth MacFarlane

From a writing standpoint, maybe television is a little more satisfying because it's not all hinging on one thing. You can experiment, week to week, and you can be a little narrower in your scope one week, and then be a little broader the next week. But with film, everything can look the way you want it to look. You can really sculpt the final product. So from a directorial standpoint, film is more satisfying. But, they're both forms of media that I'd like to keep involvement in. — Seth MacFarlane

Most of us at the Reserve Bank come from a background in economics and hence have a predisposition in favour of free markets and a sceptical attitude towards intervention in those markets unless there is a clearly defined economic rationale for it. — Ian Macfarlane

You don't want to be nasty for the sake of being nasty. — Seth MacFarlane

I can see no practical application of molecular biology to human affairs ... DNA is a tangled mass of linear molecules in which the informational content is quite inaccessible. — Frank Macfarlane Burnet

This is life, the one you get so go and have a ball, because the world don't move, to the beat of just one drum. What might be right for you, may not be right for some. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have my opening statement..sit ubu sit. Good dog. — Seth MacFarlane

The worst thing to happen at the Oscars would be if nothing happened. You want something unscripted, something to riff on, something kinda out there. — Seth MacFarlane

Looking from afar - from present to past, from exile to homeland, from island back to mainland, mountain-top at lowland - results notin vision's diffusion but in its sharpening; not in memory's dispersal but in it's plenishment. — Robert Macfarlane

The unknown is so inflammatory to the imagination because it is an imaginatively malleable space: a projection-screen onto which a culture or an individual can throw their fears and their aspirations. Like Echo's cave, the unknown will answer back with whatever you shout at it. — Robert Macfarlane

'The Brady Bunch' asks nothing of you as a viewer. Sometimes is just what the doctor ordered. — Seth MacFarlane

The good thing about Broadway is that you don't have to worry about an airdate. It gets done when it gets done. — Seth MacFarlane

Now it's fantastic, this is a medium that adults should be able to enjoy, it's not just for our kids. I feel like now with Adult Swim and all these different outlets for adults to enjoy animation, it's huge. I love being a part of it, absolutely love it. — Rachael MacFarlane

Wild animals, like wild places, are invaluable to us precisely because they are not us. They are uncompromisingly different. The paths they follow, the impulses that guide them, are of other orders. The seal's holding gaze, before it flukes to push another tunnel through the sea, the hare's run, the hawk's high gyres : such things are wild. Seeing them, you are made briefly aware of a world at work around and beside our own, a world operating in patterns and purposes that you do not share. These are creatures, you realise that live by voices inaudible to you. — Robert Macfarlane

As Dougal ushered them into the dining room, he wondered if Sophia's father and her grandfather would both wish to stay at MacFarlane House with them.
But as he looked into Sophia's smiling eyes, he realized it didn't matter. So long as she was by his side, life would be a grand adventure.
And no man could ask for more. — Karen Hawkins

Perceive no opposition between precision and mystery, or between naming and not-knowing. — Robert Macfarlane

Obviously I'm a big fan of 'South Park', but it gets tiring at times when there's so much of it. — Seth MacFarlane

If people can't abide by the confidentiality of the cabinet room, then they should leave the cabinet. — Ian Macfarlane

The independence of a nation springs from the independent spirit of its citizens — Alan Macfarlane

We lack - we need - a term for those places where one experiences a 'transition' from a known landscape ... into 'another world': somewhere we feel and think significantly differently. They exist even in familiar landscapes: there when you cross a certain watershed, recline or snowline, or enter rain, storm or mist. Such moments are rites of passage that reconfigure local geographics, leaving known places outlandish or quickened, revealing continents within counties. — Robert Macfarlane

I hate people who say 'Just to play devil's advocate.' — Seth MacFarlane

Anyone who lives in a city will know the feeling of having been there too long. The gorge-vision that the streets imprint on us, the sense of blockage, the longing for surfaces other than glass, brick, concrete and tarmac ... I have lived in Cambridge on and off for a decade, and I imagine I will continue to do so for years to come. And for as long as I stay here, I know I will have to also get to the wild places. — Robert Macfarlane

I'm from Connecticut, and we don't have any dialects. Well, I don't think we have any dialects, and yeah, it's very complex. That Rhode Island/Massachusetts New England region is arguably the hardest dialect to nail. — Seth MacFarlane

The success of 'The Simpsons' really opened doors. It showed that if you were working in animation you didn't necessarily have to be working in kids' television. — Seth MacFarlane

What we bloodlessy call 'place' is to young children a wild compound of dream, spell and substance: place is somewhere they are always 'in', never 'on'. — Robert Macfarlane

The resistance to science is idiotic. — Seth MacFarlane

On a certain day, I will tweet five times, and then I'll go four days without tweeting at all. It really depends on what time allows. Twitter, priority-wise, has to come after the work is done. — Seth MacFarlane

We tend to think of landscapes as affecting us most strongly when we are in them or on them, when they offer us the primary sensations of touch and sight. But there are also the landscapes we bear with us in absentia, those places that live on in memory long after they have withdrawn in actuality, and such places -- retreated to most often when we are most remote from them -- are among the most important landscapes we possess. — Robert Macfarlane

Landscape ... can 'enlarge the imagined range for self to move in. — Robert Macfarlane

We [me and my husband] both had our things. Seth was the artist, I was the singer. We were like "You do your thing, I'll do my thing and never the two shall meet." I think we had a healthy competition going through our childhood. But I sort of left the funny stuff to him, I said "You're the comedian, you're the jokester, you do that I'll be the more serious one." You need that kind of balance in the family. — Rachael MacFarlane

Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion. — Robert Macfarlane

Before you become a writer you must first become a reader. Every hour spent reading is an hour spent learning to write; — Robert Macfarlane

As the actors on the show we rarely get an opportunity to, as I said we get the scripts the night before but we have great producers on this show, so every once and a while matt or mike will say "I want to take the character in a different direction this season, what do you think about this?" and we do sort of get to add to it and feed it. — Rachael MacFarlane

The word "landmark" is from the old English "landmearc", meaning 'an object in the landscape which, by its conspicuousness, serves as a guide in the direction of one's course. — Robert Macfarlane

Although the disappearance of the true wildwood [in the British Isles] occurred in the Neolithic period, before humanity began to record its own history, creation myths in almost all cultures look fabulously back to a forested earth. In the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, the quest-story which begins world literature, Gilgamesh sets out on his journey from Uruk to the Cedar Mountains, where he has been charged to slay the Huwawa, the guardian of the forest. The Roman empire also defined itself against the forests in which its capital city was first established, and out of which its founders, the wolf-suckled twins, emerged. It was the Roman Empire which would proceed to destroy the dense forests of the ancient world. — Robert Macfarlane

Lift is created by the onwards rush of life over the curved wing of the soul. — Robert Macfarlane

A walk is only a step away from a story, and every path tells. — Robert Macfarlane

Chris Elliott could read the phonebook and he's funny. — Seth MacFarlane

I remembered what Thoreau had written in his journal about thinking nothing of walking eight miles to greet a tree. — Robert Macfarlane

In that sense at least the rector of Saint Barnabas, a man named Robert MacFarlane, did not strike me as evangelical at all. His sermons were not seamless and armor plated but had spaces in them, spaces of silence as if he needed those spaces to find deep within himself what he was going to say next, as if he was giving the rest of us space to think for a moment about what he had just been trying to say last. There was never any doubt in my mind but that the faith he was laying out before us was a faith that, even as he spoke it, he was drawing out of the raw stuff of his own life. He spoke very quietly, and the church he spoke in was not brilliantly lit but full of shadow, full of secrets. — Frederick Buechner

At one point, I was hell-bent on being a Disney animator, and sort of got over that in college and wanted to do my own stuff. You know, towards the end of college I had actually planned to go to the Boston Conservatory of Music for musical theater. — Seth MacFarlane

I don't think that I could have survived in my family without a naughty sense of humor; yeah, absolutely. I think my brother and I both get our senses of humor from our parents. I mean, my mother was absolutely hilarious and foul. She had the most ridiculously off color sense of humor, so that was sort of what we grew up with. — Rachael MacFarlane

It did matter to get out of bed. There were webs to weave. Strings to grasp. Packages to deliver. Conversations to start. Thoughts to be expressed. Sams to slam into. Oceans to swim. And sad little men hiding in electrical sockets, waiting to be born of the human imagination. — Bud Macfarlane Jr.

There have to be people who are vocal about the advancement of knowledge over faith. — Seth MacFarlane

The deepwood is vanished in these islands
much, indeed, had vanished before history began
but we are still haunted by the idea of it. The deepwood flourishes in our architecture, art and above all in our literature. Unnumbered quests and voyages have taken place through and over the deepwood, and fairy tales and dream-plays have been staged in its glades and copses. Woods have been a place of inbetweenness, somewhere one might slip from one world to another, or one time to a former: in Kipling's story 'Puck of Pook's Hill,' it is by right of 'Oak and Ash and Thorn' that the children are granted their ability to voyage back into English history. — Robert Macfarlane

To be in the Burren is to be reminded that physical matter is simultaneously indestructible and entirely transmutable: that it can swap states drastically, from vegetable to mineral or from liquid to solid. To attempt to hold these to contradictory ideas, of permanence and mutability, in the brain at the same time is usefully difficult, for it makes the individual feel at once valuable and superfluous. You become aware of yourself as constituted of nothing more than endlessly convertible matter - but also of always being perpetuated in some form. Such knowledge grants us comfortless immortality: an understanding that our bodies belong to a limitless cycle of dispersal and reconstruction. — Robert Macfarlane

Religion notoriously claims that they invented morality, they didn't. Morality exists in animals, ya know. — Seth MacFarlane

The quest for Tommy Lee Jones' laugh begins now. — Seth MacFarlane

I wrote on a show called Johnny Bravo when I was at Hanna-Barbera. — Seth MacFarlane

Lots of people like Seth MacFarlane. Many other people like watching the Oscars. But nobody likes both, not even Seth MacFarlane, who has no idea what the Oscars are. — Rob Sheffield

If something sticks around long enough that it makes it to seasonal D.V.D. release, I'll watch it. That's how I watched 'The Sopranos'. — Seth MacFarlane

We are adept, if occasionally embarrassed, at saying what we make of places - but we are far less good at saying what places make of us ... — Robert Macfarlane

I think at times I read too much of my own press. I wish I was better at taking in how great my life is, but that's surprisingly elusive. I tend to be very hard on myself and insecure about failing no matter what happens. — Seth MacFarlane

I'm wide open to getting married, but actors are not easy people to date. You end up sharing that person with this other mistress that is their career. I very much like the traditional courtship method of making a date. That's what they do in normal places, but Hollywood's not normal. — Seth MacFarlane

meaning indifferent to the distinction between things. It is not, on the whole, that natural phenomena and entities themselves are disappearing; rather that there are fewer people able to name them, and that once they go unnamed they go to some degree unseen. Language deficit leads to attention deficit. As — Robert Macfarlane

I, my own damn self, am not a Tea Party supporter. I disagree with them on social liberties, our overseas wars, Obama's birthplace, Sarah Palin, and the conspicuous absence of tea at their rallies. — Penn Jillette

A basic language-literacy of Nature is falling from us. And what is being lost along with this literacy is something perhaps even more valuable: a kind of language-magic, the power that certain words possess to enchant our imaginative relations with Nature and landscape. — Robert Macfarlane

The idea of man as the dominant mammal of the earth whose whole behaviour tends to be dominated by his own desire for dominance gripped me. It seemed to explain almost everything, and I applied it to everything. — Frank Macfarlane Burnet

I was about two years old when I first started drawing recognizable characters. — Seth MacFarlane

The whole foot is a document of motion, inscribed by repeated action. Babies - from those first foetal footfalls, the kneading of sole against womb-wall, turning themselves like astronauts in black space - have already creased their soles by the time they emerge into the world. — Robert Macfarlane

Denzel Washington has a great sense of humor. He did all those 'Nutty Professor' movies. — Seth MacFarlane

Serum albumin is a well-defined protein, but no laboratory has yet attempted to ascertain its full chemical structure. — Frank Macfarlane Burnet

The two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a big fat white guy who is threatened by change. — Seth MacFarlane

To advance science is highly honourable, and I believe the institution of the Nobel Prizes has done much to raise the prestige of scientific discovery. — Frank Macfarlane Burnet

It felt at that moment unarguable that a horizon line might exert as potent or pull upon the mind as a mountain's summit. — Robert Macfarlane

As I envisage it, landscape projects into us not like a jetty or peninsula, finite and bounded in its volume and reach, but instead as a kind of sunlight, flickeringly unmappable in its plays yet often quickening and illuminating. We are adept, if occasionally embarrassed, at saying what we make of places -- but we are far less good at saying what place makes of us. For some time now it has seemed to me that the two questions we should ask of any strong landscape are these: firstly, what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then, vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself? — Robert Macfarlane

I'm big on the importance of science, particularly right now at this point in time when there's sort of a systematic rejection of science by a lot of people in America. — Seth MacFarlane

We are fallen mostly into pieces but the wild returns us to ourselves — Robert Macfarlane

I was the kid at six who was like, 'I want to be in a jazz club.' I was never the pop kid, ever. I mean that's not true, I had a couple years where I wanted to be Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, but aside from that, no. — Rachael MacFarlane

But Longinus and his intellectual descendants had been concerned with the Sublime as a literary effect: how language, not landscape, could be lofty, grand or inspiring. — Robert Macfarlane

I'm the guy in the crowd making fun of the hero's shirt. — Seth MacFarlane

I don't gravitate toward any particular genre. I like to do things that interest me, regardless of genre. I've had a blast doing Cosmos, and I'm said that it's coming to an end. I would like to do something else like that. — Seth MacFarlane

Ye're playing fer the house? But ye won it just a month ago! Why,this land is worth more than yer estate near Stirling!"
Now that he'd toured the land and knew the true condition of the house, Dougal was tempted to agree. The deed to MacFarlane House was worth far more than he'd originally thought.
Shelton shook his head. "Ye're moonstruck, me lord. Moonstruck and fairy-pinched. — Karen Hawkins

'Family Guy' has this weird thing of attracting people. People either hate it or can't get enough of it. There's really no one in between. — Seth MacFarlane

I started in theatre. I went to the Boston Conservatory and majored in musical theater. — Rachael MacFarlane